The miners were fighting to save their jobs, their industry and their communities. Unfortunately, their leader, Arthur Scargill wasn't. HE was fighting to bring down the Thatcher government - and the miners couldn't see that. They followed him like lemmings over the cliff edge. KING ARTHUR? Do me a favour!!!
Thanks again for these interviews. The mining communities in the north-east of England, in Cornwall & in Wales must have suffered similar destruction as the result of the clearly political rather than economical thinking. Those ancient close-knit working communities will indeed be no more, more’s the pity. I’d have less of an issue with the seemingly unnecessary closing of many of these mines (which let’s face it had some of the worst/hardest working conditions anyone could realistically imagine) if it didn’t mean the complete eradication of any decent employment that these mines gave these areas. There didn’t seem to be any post-closure societal planning / area regrowth options proposed and to me it seems that there hasn’t been much of a sustained effort to economically regenerate these now quite impoverished areas by any government since.
Nothing wrong with good old Egg and chips for tea I was brought up on it has a young lad back in the eighties. And I have got so much respect for the old miners it was a devastating time for them men back then and all the families from mining communities.
For the miner to say nothing happened in South Wales such as throwing stones. A taxi driver was murdered by two miners in Merthyr who threw a rock through his car windscreen when he was taking a working miner to work.
An add to that the taxi driver ha d just ripped out his mother's kitchen and all she had was a cold tap on the walll he was taking the next week off to put a new kitchen in for her often wonder what happened she was about 75 .....the concrete block hit the driver in the chest the 2 miners got 6 years for manslaughter...
It was political as labour closed most mines but there wasn't a peep about that, odd how Thatcher's portrayed as the villain instead of Scargill. It was odd seeing types like Roger Waters shrieking against Thatcher after she made sure he could keep much more of his songwriting royalties for a change, Iron Maiden also hated on her before Bruce joined as if they wanted labour to take their royalties too.
Unfortunately for the miners, Th****er had the perfect man in Scargill - she goaded him into the strikes & he wasn't clever enough to side step it. I'm not saying Scargill was an idiot, but his heart ruled his head & he should've handled it better. If you compare him to Mick Lynch, there is a world of difference in keeping your head. As a young lad in the Midlands, my Dad worked in Drakelow C Power Station & I could see it from the 7-8 miles away from my home. I remember the coal stocks well over the height of the cooling towers & mountains of coal wouldn't have been a bad description. I felt really bad for the miners (having grown up in an old mining village) & there was a lot of grief at the time, like _The Battle of Orgrieve_ & the injustices of Th****er's underhand secret policing. Even as a young kid, I admired the striking lads, I really did. As a nation, something was lost with the end of the strike & things went downhill from there. Th****er was an absolute cancer & plague on the country & it truly is a disaster that the miners didn't win the war. You & your families will be remembered for what you tried to do for yourselves, your communities & for the country.
@@JamesRichards-mj9kwReally. Didn't know Farage, Tice, Cameron, _The Lying Clown_ et al were members. Not sure why you're wasting my time with this though, I didn't say anything about the biggest own goal in history.
@@old_seadog Labour's one-sided devolution broke up the UK, and caused Brexit. If the autistic Brown had not reneged to Labour's manifesto promise to hold a referendum we would still be in the right-wing Thatcherite EU.
@@GibbonsTalksBoxing You’re obviously correct. But Worse than that, it’s wholly inaccurate too. We know that there WAS a plan to close the pits, and the miners were fully aware of that plan, so they went on strike to fight the closures. 40 years after the event, there’s no excuse for still being unaware of those facts. So the OP is either lazy, intentionally ignorant, or ideologically motivated, and doesn’t deserve any response.
